City of São Paulo Will Not Reopen on June 1st; Protocols Must Be in Place Beforehand

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The Mayor of São Paulo, Bruno Covas, announced on Thursday, May 28th, that no sector may reopen as of next Monday, June 1st. Despite Wednesday’s announcement by the state government that the city may already start to relax the isolation measures for Covid-19, Covas clarified that the final decision rests with the Mayors.

“The state has not said at any point that the cities will reopen from June 1st. It is delegating this decision to the cities,” he said at a media conference earlier yesterday afternoon.

According to the Mayor, as of next Monday, June 1st, the city will start receiving protocol proposals from the associations of the sectors that will be authorized to reopen.

The city is included in stage two of the state program, which allows the reopening, subject to restrictions, of real estate agents, car dealerships, offices, stores and shopping malls.

The pre-requisites sectors are required to submit to the city are: health, hygiene and testing protocols, self-regulation rules, inspection rules, communication policy for the rules, and protection for consumers and employees.

“Entrepreneurs and associations need to come and discuss with the city government how this reopening will take place,” Covas said. “Nothing will be authorized without the support and approval of health surveillance”.

Only after the protocols have been ratified will business activities be allowed to reopen in the city, explained the Mayor. “Until then, we will continue monitoring.” The Mayor refrained from providing a deadline on when these protocols will be published.

At the start of the press conference, Covas pointed out that “the city of São Paulo is still in quarantine,” but is starting to move toward reopening.

To remain in the program’s stage two, the mandatory wearing of masks and social distancing rules remain in force in the capital. To avoid the need to close services again, the city will need to record a stable transmission rate, number of cases and deaths, in addition to ICU occupancy after the reopening, Covas said.

“We will conduct this reopening in the city of São Paulo based on the health protocols, the certification of health surveillance, so that we will not repeat here what several other places in the world have done, which was to discuss reopening and weeks later having to reverse it”.

The city of São Paulo, the national epicenter of Covid-19, counts 54,948 confirmed cases and 3,619 deaths from the coronavirus. The ICU bed capacity on Thursday, May 28th, stood at 92 percent.

Due to critical hospital occupancy rates, Covas announced the inauguration of three more hospitals (Guarapiranga, Brigadeiro and Sorocabana Hospitals) to treat patients with the novel coronavirus.

How to submit proposals to the city

Proposals should be submitted to the Secretariat of Economic Development and Labor, through its website in this link. Only sectorial organizations may propose the documentation.

“Citizens who wish to contribute should send their suggestions to the companies where they work or class organizations. The companies, in turn, should submit their proposals to the sector bodies, which will be in charge of forwarding them to the Mayorlty of São Paulo”, says the website.